According to a survey on digital usage in China, around 91.8 percent of respondents had used WeChat as of the third quarter of 2023. The short video app Douyin, the social commerce site Xiaohongshu, and the Twitter-like site Weibo, were among the most popular social media platforms in China. How successful is WeChat in China? The country’s most popular messaging app, WeChat, boasts over one billion monthly active users. For many Chinese consumers, WeChat is part of daily life, helping them to organize tasks such as paying bills, ordering food delivery, and calling a taxi. On average, WeChat users spent about an hour and 20 minutes per day on the app. Large user base with high engagement The social media scene in China is huge and mobile-centric. In 2023, the social media penetration rate amounted to 74 percent in China, slightly higher than in countries like the United States and Japan. While the user number has shown signs of reaching a saturation point, Chinese consumers have been spending more time online, with a considerable daily usage of social media.

In 2022, there were around **** billion social media users in China. Despite Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter being blocked in the country, local social networking sites such as WeChat and Weibo have been attracting millions of users, making China the world’s biggest social media market.

What is the role of social media in China? Around ** percent of the Chinese population use internet. Social networking plays a huge role among netizens, especially the younger generation. Chinese social media, just like Western equivalents, not only serves as a way to communicate online, but also as one of the main sources of news and entertainment, e-payments, shopping advisors, and dating channels. In 2021, over ** percent of surveyed social media users said they mostly appreciated that social networks help them to keep in touch with friends and family, but also share their life moments and thoughts.

What are the most popular social media platforms?

WeChat (Weixin in Chinese) is by far the most commonly seen social app in the country, used for anything from texting/calling to photo and video sharing, dating, financial services, game-playing, shopping, ride hailing, and so on. However, Chinese social media scene is quite diverse and dynamic, therefore, it is not just about WeChat. Instant messaging app Tencent QQ, microblogging site Weibo, video sharing app Youku Tudou, short-form video app Douyin (aka TikTok), photo editing and sharing app Meitu, restaurant recommendation and food ordering platform Meituan, Quora equivalent Zhihu, and dating app Momo are just a few among the most popular Chinese social media examples.

In spring 2022, it was found that Louis Vuitton was the most popular luxury brand on WeChat and Weibo, with a score of ** points out of 100. It was followed by Fior and Gucci, each with ** points.

In China, the number of college students using mobile phone based messaging and social networking applications like WeChat is increasing rapidly. However, there has been minimal research into the addictive nature of these applications and the psychological characteristics associate with their excessive use. There is also no published scale available for assessing excessive use of WeChat and similar applications. In the current study, we collected data from 1,245 college students in China (715 females) and developed the WeChat Excessive Use Scale (WEUS). We then assessed the relationship between excessive use of WeChat and excessive use of a social networking application-Weibo, problematic use of mobile phones, external locus of control, and social interaction skills. Our 10-item scale featured three factors, namely- “mood modification,” “salience” and ‘‘conflict”- critical factors in assessing different forms of addiction. The WEUS was found to be a reliable instrument in assessing excessive use of WeChat as it showed good internal consistency and correlated with other measures of problematic use social networking and mobile phone addiction. Our results showed that excessive users of WeChat are more likely to excessively use Weibo than they are to problematically use mobile phones. Our study also showed that greater excessive use of WeChat is associated with higher external locus of control and greater online social interaction skills. These results reveal that WeChat has unique and strong appeal among college students in China. Further, practitioners should consider dealing with malleable factors like locus of control and real life social skills in treating people with problematic messaging and social networking.

Facebook, the world’s most popular social network, has billions of monthly active users globally of which less than three million are in China. The reason why Facebook reaches only around four percent of the Chinese population is because it is blocked in mainland China (excluding Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan) along with many other foreign social media giants like YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter.

Why is Facebook banned in China?  

The Chinese government has been blocking access to Facebook since July 2009, when a series of anti-government riots appeared in the Xinjiang province. The activists reportedly used Facebook as their main communications channel. Chinese authorities have no control over foreign social networks and see them as a threat to social and political stability, hence a long list of foreign internet sites, Facebook among them, are no longer easily accessible in China. Some people, however, access blocked websites by connecting to a virtual private network (VPN).

What is the future of Facebook in China?  

Facebook’s most recent attempt to make a comeback in July 2018 was immediately prevented by the Chinese authorities. It is unlikely that China will allow it for as long as Facebook refuses to store its data servers within the country’s borders. Besides, keeping foreign social media banned is economically beneficial for such Chinese social networks as WeChat, Sina Weibo and Youku Tudou. WeChat, the most popular Chinese social media platform and messaging app, seems to successfully fill the “Facebook void” for at least a billion monthly active users.

The objective of this study is to update existing research to discover Chinese tourists' emerging travel needs after the relaxation of borders and to explore what kind of social media posts and services a destination that can attract more attention and ultimately be able to bring economic benefits.The questionnaire consisted of questions corresponding to each of the seven constructs, (i) top opinion leader (TOL), (ii) images (I), (iii) hygiene and safety (HS), (iv) financial promotion (MP), (v) integrated social app (ISA), (vi) travel interest (TI), and (vii) purchase intention (PI), that appear in the conceptual model (Table 3), as well as four demographic questions related to age, gender, job, and travel experience. On March 29, 2023, the survey links were distributed through WeChat, QQ, Weibo, and Xiaohongshu, popular instant messengers and social media in China, to reach as many respondents as possible. Until May 19, 2023, the questionnaire collection was completed, with 500 responses collected.

In March 2023, super app WeChat had around *** million monthly active users of the Generation Z in China. When it comes to the active penetration rate, Weibo, QQ, and Taobao performed better than WeChat.

Social confidence functions as a vital spiritual force in fostering the positive and healthy evolution of society. This paper explores how social media exposure contributes to the construction of social confidence within the framework of Media-system Dependency Theory. The research unveils the following key findings: (1) Social media exposure positively facilitates social confidence; (2) Group efficacy and group cohesion, perceived as manifestations of cognitive divergence between "efficacy" and "collective" within collective efficacy, both serve as mediating mechanisms influencing the impact of social media exposure on social confidence. The Channel Testing of Causality confirms that group cohesion plays a significantly more crucial role as a pathway compared to group efficacy; (3) The differentiated impact of social media exposure, encompassing Tencent WeChat and Sina Weibo, materializes in distinct components of social confidence and follows different influence pathways.

According to a survey about Generation Z in China, more than ** percent of respondents expressed aspects of their live to others on social media apps like WeChat Moments, Weibo, Red, Douyin (TikTok), Kuaishou, etc. only once every two to three months or even less. Merely *** percent of respondents posted information about their life on these platforms every day.

The data supporting the findings of our study were derived from state sources, e.g., WeChat group chat records, Weibo posts, and interviews. An anonymized subset of the data, including coding frameworks and summary tables, is available here. While other anonymized but more sensitive WeChat records or interview transcripts are only available upon request from the authors. Due to ethical considerations and the need to protect participant confidentiality, full access to raw data is restricted.

Abstract

This dataset includes public opinion data from November 1, 2022, to December 1, 2022, during the period when the "White Paper Movement" occurred in China amid rigid pandemic lockdowns. It covers a wide array of data sources, including over 81,000 websites, 5,600 forums, print and digital media, social media platforms such as WeChat and Weibo accounts, and overseas media outlets. This extensive reach ensures that the data is representative of diverse online activities.

Methodology

The raw data were wrangled for inclusion in Data Farm. For more information, please see CnOpenData GitLab.

Social confidence functions as a vital spiritual force in fostering the positive and healthy evolution of society. This paper explores how social media exposure contributes to the construction of social confidence within the framework of Media-system Dependency Theory. The research unveils the following key findings: (1) Social media exposure positively facilitates social confidence; (2) Group efficacy and group cohesion, perceived as manifestations of cognitive divergence between "efficacy" and "collective" within collective efficacy, both serve as mediating mechanisms influencing the impact of social media exposure on social confidence. The Channel Testing of Causality confirms that group cohesion plays a significantly more crucial role as a pathway compared to group efficacy; (3) The differentiated impact of social media exposure, encompassing Tencent WeChat and Sina Weibo, materializes in distinct components of social confidence and follows different influence pathways.

In China, the number of social network users was estimated to reach roughly *** million in 2020, showing an increase of seven percent from the year prior. WeChat (Tencent's all-in-one messaging app) and Sina Weibo (the Chinese equivalent of Twitter) have been the most popular social media sites in the country.

According to a survey on Chinese podcast listeners conducted in March 2020, more than ** percent of the respondents said that they discovered new podcasts via podcast apps. Searching the internet and discovering via WeChat or Weibo were also every popular ways to find out about new podcasts among Chinese listeners.

Background: In response to the potentially concurrent mental health crisis due to the COVID-19 outbreak, there have been ongoing mental health policies put in place in China. This review aims to systematically synthesize the implemented national-level mental health policies released by the Chinese government during the COVID-19 outbreak, and summarize the implementation of those mental health policies.Methods: Six databases and two websites were systematically searched, including published studies and gray literature published between December 1, 2019 and October 29, 2020.Results: A total of 40 studies were included. Among them, 19 were national-level policies on mental health released by the Chinese government, and 21 studies reported data on the implementation of those mental health policies. Mental health policies were issued for COVID-19 patients, suspected cases, medical staff, the general population, patients with mental illness, and mental institutions. In the early stage of the COVID-19 epidemic, attention was paid to psychological crisis intervention. In the later stage of the epidemic, the government focused mainly on psychological rehabilitation. During the COVID-19 outbreak, more than 500 psychiatrists from all over China were sent to Wuhan, about 625 hotlines were notified in 31 provinces, several online psychological consultation platforms were established, social software such as TikTok, Weibo, and WeChat were used for psychological education, and many books on mental health were published. Responding quickly, maximizing the use of resources, and emphasizing the importance of policy evaluation and implementation quality were characteristics of the mental health policies developed during the COVID-19 outbreak. Challenges facing China include a low rate of mental health service utilization, a lack of evaluation data on policy effects, and no existing national-level emergency response system and designated workforce to provide psychological crisis interventions during a national emergency or disaster.Conclusions: This review suggests that China has responded quickly and comprehensively to a possible mental health crisis during the COVID-19 outbreak, appropriate mental health policies were released for different members of the population. As the epidemic situation continues to change, the focus of mental health policies has been adjusted accordingly. However, we should note that there has been a lack of separate policies for specific mental health issues during the COVID-19 outbreak.

According to a report on fashion luxury brands, Dior remained the most influential fashion luxury brand in China in the last quarter of 2021. The "Media Impact Value"(MIV®) of the French high-end fashion house increased slightly to *** million U.S. dollars. Chanel took the second spot, trailing with *** million U.S. dollars. Louis Vuitton replaced Gucci as the third with a jump of ** million U.S. dollars in its MIV®. Moving to digital and social The three luxury labels, in the same order, were also the largest magazine ad spenders in China in 2021. While Dior and Chanel decreased their magazine ad expenditures by over ***** percent, Louis Vuitton did the opposite with a **** percent increase. Overall, magazine publishers in China took a major hit in 2020 as luxury advertising budget dwindled. Social media, especially Weibo, Xiaohongshu, and WeChat, has become the new marketing frontier of global fashion houses. Major platforms for social marketing Among social channels, Weibo brought the highest level of social marketing impact to luxury advertisers in China. The Chinese equivalent Twitter had over *** million daily active users. However, Chinese Gen Z and millennials preferred Xiaohongshu (aka Little Red Book or RED) to other social media. When it comes to luxury product research, WeChat was still the first option for many Chinese consumers.